


The Stars Align

by Fionhen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-13
Updated: 2011-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:54:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionhen/pseuds/Fionhen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A deal between the king of Hell and Heaven's sheriff. An archangel on the run from purgatory. A war they need to win at any cost. Crowley and Castiel venture into purgatory looking for an army and find Gabriel instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stars Align

**Author's Note:**

> Title: The Stars Align  
> Author: thunder_nari  
> Artist: kaworu_renritsu  
> Genre/Pairing: slash: Gabriel/Castiel/Crowley, past Gabriel/Lucifer  
> Rating: R  
> Word count: ~20 000  
> Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers up until ep 6.03 and AU from there. Not quite dark fic but a darker tone.  
> Thanks: Tons of thanks to slartibartfast for the beta. And to kaworu_renritsu for the fabulous art and for putting up with my slowness! And of course the creators of this bang. The whole thing has been fun and exciting! Okay, at times a little hair pulling. :P But such is the way of fic.
> 
> Link to art: [Art Master Post](http://kaworu-renritsu.livejournal.com/136228.html)

  
**The Stars Align**

 ******

 **Heaven**

 ******

The building is the same as the last time Castiel came across it, though the surrounding wall is now scrubbed clear of Enochian. Which only means that this is a trap – again, much like the last time. And like the Winchesters had before, Castiel will walk into it because he needs what's on the other side of these doors.

He walks alone the way he's used to, though there had been a few who had volunteered to join him. He's fairly certain alone is how he's wanted. This weapon is too important to allow to slip away just because Castiel didn't play by the rules. Rules laid out by a demon, a game that Castiel isn't all that sure he understands. It would have been easier, for instance, if Castiel had simply been invited, rather than lead along on a treasure hunt of inane clues when he has other things to be doing. Castiel isn’t fond of fanfare and tricks.

Dean calls him but Castiel just doesn't have time to answer. He wants to or maybe it's ingrained in him, but either way it's difficult to ignore the calls, the same as it had been when Sam first prayed to him a year ago. But they aren't in danger – no more than usual – and his brothers are still dying. Castiel has other duties.

The door of the mansion opens easily for him and inside the dark entrance and hallway beyond, a Hellhound guards the way. It looks at Castiel and grins widely at him, exposing teeth that have broken off into shards, then it turns and Castiel follows it. He guesses that he's supposed to be impressed now. The Hellhound takes Castiel along a hallway, through a dark and spacious den, another hallway and finally to a small office. It sits back, watching Castiel expectantly and Castiel can't help it. There's the first flicker of nerves through him as he reaches for the handle of the office door and it turns beneath his grip.

Inside, the room is only marginally better lit than the hall. A lamp on an ornate mahogany desk illuminates a room lined with ancient books. Castiel couldn't care less about them; his vision is fixed on the demon behind that desk, in the high-backed leather chair, swilling cognac and watching Castiel's arrival with complete disinterest.

“Was all of this really necessary?” Castiel asks when Crowley says nothing.

“Yes,” Crowley says without further explanation and Castiel fights the urge to grind his teeth. He feels so quick to impatience these days, with so much riding on every second. “I'm glad you got my invitation.”

“I've wasted my time following a trail of half-truths and whispers. Do you have the sword?”

“What, no pleasantries first?” Crowley raises his eyebrows, leaning forward in his chair. He makes a show of pouring out a measure of cognac into a second glass and hands it to Castiel. Castiel hesitates and takes it while a second hand ticks away in the back of his mind. “Congratulations on your new position in Heaven.”

“The sword, Crowley.”

“Oh fine.” Crowley rolls his eyes and sits back, sipping at his drink and Castiel follows the example only he downs it in a swallow. Part of him takes a bit of pleasure in the grimace of annoyance Crowley gives at the misuse of a fine drink. “But you don't get something for nothing these days.”

Here it is; the trick. The trap. “What do you want?” Castiel walks into it just like he's supposed to do.

“I need your help with something.” Crowley pauses but Castiel waits, willing to hear him out before he decides if he'll burn the demon away or not. Though it wouldn't be so easy; Castiel is aware of Crowley's own rise in the ranks. It wouldn't be easy but it wouldn't be impossible. “I'll give you the sword in all its flaming glory if you help me to find something.”

“Find _what_?” Castiel snaps, growing bored of the trail. He wants to come to the answer.

Crowley shrugs. “Purgatory.”

“Purgatory?” Castiel parrots, confusion clouding his thoughts. “What use do you have of purgatory?” Castiel is...aware of the dimension, resting between the worlds of Heaven and Hell and Earth. He knows it exists. Beyond that, it's never held any importance to him and he can't think why it would for Crowley.

“I want it. You know what goes there, right? Werewolves and vampires and all the nastiest little buggers you could dream up. Anything without a soul goes there.”

“And you want me to help you find this?” The demon must have lost his mind if he thinks Castiel will hand over such a powerhouse to the armies of Hell. But Crowley is looking at him, this 'I know something you don't' look that sets Castiel's nerves on edge again. He's missing the point here.

“I'm a fair creature. I'll let you have half of it. You know what else goes to purgatory, don't you?” Castiel doesn't and Crowley looks at him like he's a particularly stupid insect. “Angels, you half-wit. Dead angels go to purgatory cause they don't have souls either, do they?”

“Angels,” Castiel is repeating again, the information sinking into his head and just as quickly, an idea.

“Oh, I think he gets it.” Crowley grins and pours another measure of cognac into the empty glass Castiel still holds. “So what do you say, angel? Do we have a deal? I'll give you half of purgatory and all the angels in it you want. You'll let me keep the other half and all the nasties therein. I'll even sweeten the pot with the sword.” He holds his glass out to toast against Castiel's but Castiel hesitates. This new information captures him, spins ideas around but doubt as well and if only he had the time to think about it. Crowley cuts that short. “It's now or never, Castiel, I'm not in the habit of making offers twice.”

“...Deal.”

Crowley clinks their glasses together and they drink, Castiel tossing his back again and when he lowers the glass, Crowley is on his side of the desk, a breath apart from him. Castiel doesn't resist Crowley's hand at the back of his neck or the press of the demon's mouth. The demon's tongue slides along his and Castiel can feel the lines of the contract imprinting itself on his vessel's bones and deeper to his grace. When they part, the room spins a little and Crowley's hands are cupping his backside.

Castiel glares at the demon. “That's unnecessary.”

Crowley doesn't look a bit repentant. “Matter of opinion.”

  
******   


Castiel leaves with the sword of Eden returned to Heaven's possession and the sharp words of the contract digging into his being. He's unsure exactly what he's done but the seeds of ideas had taken route the moment Crowley had spoken.

Angels in purgatory.

Some of course, who Castiel would rather leave there. Zachariah comes to mind. But others, others could be allies. There's an army waiting there, one that would back Castiel against Raphael when so few angels do right now. Many of them too frightened to stand up against an archangel. To stand up against one of the four who have laid witness to God. The ones who side with Castiel now do so dubiously, with doubt and fear in their hearts. Castiel would not be able to move them at all if they couldn't sense the stamp of their Father's resurrection on his grace. They might agree with him, they might seek the change he seeks but what hope have they against an archangel? Something Castiel will never be, for all the fresh power his Father instilled in him.

Castiel turns to Joshua's counsel first but Joshua has no answers for him or none that he's willing to give. Raphael might know but Castiel has no way of procuring that information and he suspects Raphael might use it himself if Castiel tips his hand. He'll have to be careful with his involvement and as such, he doesn't enlist the aid of his brothers.

He enlists the aid of the Winchesters instead, finding them at a diner outside a town in Oregon. Dean jolts at his arrival in the booth across from him, coffee sloshing a little over its rim before he slams the mug down. “Jesus, Cas. I'm not used to this crap anymore.”

“I need your help.”

“Oh that's rich.”

Castiel ignores him and pushes on. “I need to find purgatory.” Castiel thinks what Dean does with his coffee next is called a spit take.

“ _What_?”

“Purgatory, I need...” Castiel begins to explain as patiently as he can before looking to the vacant spot beside Dean a second before the Crowley appears and this time, Dean seems to have collected himself. Beside Castiel, Sam is as still and calm as an empty pool of water.

“Sorry, angel, these boys already work for me. Though I suppose since we've got the same goal, I could let you borrow them.”

“Same...go- What? Cas, what the hell is going on?” Dean demands, gaze cutting between them.

“Certain...agreements...” Castiel tries to explain what he very much does not want to in halting words. Heat burns through his vessel and into his face, not helped by the knowing look Crowley keeps giving him. He's not sure whether to be more relieved or mortified when Dean cuts to the chase.

“You made a deal with Crowley? Are you out of your mind?” Dean's tone dresses him down and Castiel only lashes out in return, quick to anger the way he's quick to most things these days, even possibly disastrous choices.

“I've told you I don't have the luxury. Or did you forget war?”

“Did you forget the issue of Sam's soul? Did you even know this son of a bitch has it?”

Castiel didn't know and that stops his irritation at Dean in its tracks, looking sharply to Crowley instead. Crowley raises his hands in placation but he doesn't appear at all worried. There's that knowing look again, like he understands more than Castiel does and Castiel suspects that's true. “What? It's a bit on insurance on their cooperation. They'll get it back just as soon as they find us an alpha that can tell us where purgatory is.”

“Give it back, Crowley,” Castiel says, half-rising from his seat.

“Are you so sure they'll stick around to help you out?”

Castiel looks to the brothers and thinks that he might have been once. But now Dean is looking at him with disbelief while Sam just waits to see how this will play out. When Castiel hesitates, Dean looses a disbelieving snort. “Come on, Cas. Are you serious with this? He's a _demon_.” And Castiel wants to growl out that he's aware of that. “What do you think he's going to do with all the evil holed up in purgatory?”

And Castiel is aware of that as well. Not Crowley's precise endgame but that he's handing one enemy weapons in order to overcome another. But he thinks Dean doesn't understand how much more dangerous Heaven will be than Hell if it's not stabilized. This is for the greater good and Dean will come to understand it. He can't quite look at Dean though and he looks at Crowley instead. “I'll ensure he holds up his end of the agreement.” Even looking at Crowley he can see the shock and betrayal on Dean's face.

“Well, now that we've got that out of the way. I've got a job for you two.”

“And why can't you two just do it yourselves?”

Crowley shrugs and sits back. “Rather not have any competitors getting ideas, you know?” Castiel nods his agreement, trying not to think about Raphael putting Zachariah back into play. “Course that's the beauty of having an angel in my court. Once you bag the beastie, your Cas here can just read its mind. Can't you?”

“I can attempt...”

“So what is it?” Sam finally makes his voice heard and Castiel glances to him. He wonders if Sam would end up in purgatory if he were killed now.

“Werewolf. For real this time.”

Castiel still can’t bring himself to look directly at Dean as Dean sighs a resigned, “Awesome.”

  
******   


The only safe grounds in Heaven are the human fields and Castiel wonders how long that will last. The rest is fair game, where it's not safe to walk in the cities and the beaches are pockmarked with holes, and the ice fields are smoking beneath the blaze of their fury. Heaven is infinite but none of it seems untouched. Where the screams of the tortured permeates the air and if Castiel had a vessel here to breathe with, he knows there would be the electric stench of wings.

They've captured two of Raphael’s angels but any intel Castiel might glean from them is disturbed by Dean's call. The alpha werewolf is captured and held. The two angels join the uncounted others who've been lost in this battle and Castiel descends, sliding into his otherwise empty vessel, hidden in the stasis of a pocket dimension, and barely allowing himself a second to re-accustom to the sensation of...sensation. The beat of a heart, the taste of the air, the doubling of uncertainty at all of his actions. If he had the time, he might fantasize of staying like this and he understands better than he wants why demons seek to possess people.

He follows Dean's prayer until he finds the brothers in the old warehouse their grandfather has used and the old hunter is there as well, the three of them standing before a cage and in it, a chained werewolf. Samuel looks far more disapproving of Castiel now than he did before but Castiel focuses on the demon that bares sharp canines at him.

“You stink of demon, angel,” the werewolf growls at him with a low rumbling laugh and Castiel narrows his eyes. “It's written all over you. Working with us now? Heaven seems to be lowering its standard but you're all just glorified demons in the end, aren't you?”

Castiel vanishes and reappears inside the bars and the werewolf grins at him but Castiel can taste its fear. The same way it can taste his shame before he reaches out and plunges his fingertips into the werewolf's head. Its screams are easy to ignore, like the rush of images that filter into his mind, flipping through like a scrapbook until he hits what he's looking for.

“There,” he whispers to himself when he has it, drawing the strand of knowledge from the demon until he has it firmly in his own mind. He drops his hand to his side and the werewolf slumps, panting, in the chair. When he turns to the other three, Crowley is standing with them and Castiel finds himself startled at the sight of a gun aimed at him. Crowley shoots once and the bullet hits in the center of the werewolf's forehead.

“Ready to move this act on?”

Castiel appears next to the demon and when he finally looks at Dean, he can't interpret the expression in his gaze. A lot like fear, a lot like Dean is realizing some of the truth in the werewolf's words. But Castiel is better than a demon and he turns to Crowley. “Sam's soul.”

“Oh that.”

“Yes. That.”

They stare for a moment before Crowley sighs and raises his hands. “Fine. You might feel a bit of a tingling sensation,” he warns before laying fingers over Sam's forehead and over his chest. There's a spark of gold from the tips of his fingers and then Sam is screaming and the light floods into his eyes.

Dean is there immediately, grabbing hold of Sam when Crowley takes a step back and Sam falls, convulsing on the ground. Dean yells at them for an explanation, Sam cradled close even as he stills.

“He'll be fine,” Crowley says.

Crowley has already moved away and Castiel steps to join him but Dean is looking between them - at Castiel - with that same betrayal in his gaze. “You're not just gonna leave?” And Castiel doesn't want to. He just doesn't know what else to do anymore.

“I'll check in. Give Sam some time, he'll recover.” A gesture to Crowley and they're on their way.

  
******   


“So...the gateway to Purgatory is in...New Jersey?” Crowley questions skeptically as he glances around at the area Castiel has brought them to.

“There's a Devil's Gate here. If we take the right turns, we'll end up in Purgatory instead.”

“Or just a storm drain.” They're standing and peering into the mouth of it, surrounded by damp concrete and graffiti. A light mist comes from the mouth of the drain and it's dark with night. “After you.”

Castiel fights the urge to roll his eyes and strides forward, footsteps echoing off the enclosed space. There are signs of the human’s excitement to the close proximity of Hell in the designs and words painted on the walls. An undercurrent which Castiel can feel all the more acutely. It grows stronger as they walk on, turning on a fork in the tunnel and not long after, the passage branches into many others and at each turn they grow narrower. They have to crawl eventually, through the silt at the bottom of the drain and Castiel is thankful that they aren't crawling through water.

“You better know where you're going, angel.”

Though Castiel isn't entirely sure he hasn't gotten turned around. There's something here that presses at his grace and the dark is unnatural. He can't see through it as well as he should and the way Crowley occasionally runs into his legs says the demon is little better off. It's not long before he's groping his way forward with his hands, feeling out the turns in the passage and hoping he's picking the right ones.

The light when it hits him is so bright and sudden and quick that Castiel flinches back from it and Crowley knocks into him from behind again. Sharp teeth flash in his face and Castiel only relaxes when it's a cat hissing at him. It flicks an ear and turns to trot down the passageway, leaving Castiel in darkness while the area around it remains illuminated.

“There's a spirit here. A guide.” Castiel follows it and soon, the tunnel widens and they can walk again.

“Great. Or a trap.”

“No,” Castiel says simply and follows the cat when it twitches its tail in irritation. He's walked into traps before but this isn't one of them. The cat is a trickster but only to humans and it would lead them on a path to Hell. The two of them have no souls so it will lead them on the path to purgatory.

The way stays dark around them but Castiel can always see the unnatural glow of the cat's eyes ahead. There's no light for them to reflect but they stay a dull green and Castiel quickens his pace whenever the cat vanishes from sight around a corner. He's afraid if they lose it, it won't come back for them and Castiel is certain he's lost now, that on his own, he'd lead Crowley around in circles for decades. He doesn't need to try it to know that they're suppressed here and there will be no flying away to safety. Escaping from Purgatory will be easier, like getting back out of Hell was easier.

Finally, the cat stops at the end of a long tunnel and looks back to them. Castiel pauses and when Crowley runs up against him, Castiel can feel the demon's breaths along the back of his neck but he refuses to move away. There's some light here and at the end of the tunnel, Castiel can make out a set of doors.

“Through those doors.”

“That's it? I expected a bit of a fight, honestly.”

Castiel nods in slow agreement. Maze of tunnels notwithstanding, this has been too easy but the cat only sits on its haunches and stares at them as they step past, down the last corridor and to the door which slides open to admit them.

  
******   


Purgatory is full of nothing.

Together, they step onto the threshold and they're greeted with a haze of smoke that holds no scent and no heat. They can see through it a short way but the landscape appears barren and Castiel is reminded of the ice fields in Heaven, the empty wastelands of Hell where the hounds roam. There is no noise, no screams.

“Where is everyone?” Castiel questions, trying to see further into the smoke, casting out with his grace in search of the angels he knows must be here but like in the tunnels, he still feels repressed.

Crowley shrugs in response and they move forward, cautiously making their way through the haze and as they walk there are shapes that take form through it. They come out of the smoke at an ambling walk, each of them appearing human and naked, and though Castiel tenses for a fight, they carry on as if he and Crowley aren't there. Castiel knows that these are supernatural creatures. That these are vampires and werewolves and skinwalkers. But they’re nothing now and only by Castiel’s grace that he can tell they were ever something more. When Crowley approaches one and waves his hand in its face, the thing shuffles to a stop and blinks a slow blink before altering direction enough that it can carry on.

“Right, that's not creepy,” Crowley says as he watches the creature leave.

Castiel presses on, searching a little desperately now for an angel and there, he almost misses it. There’s no sense of grace, no crackle of wings but there’s something familiar. Her face resolves through the mist as he approaches and Castiel's stomach sinks as he recognizes her beneath the now plain features. But he knew her so long that now he would know her anywhere.

“Anna.” But she doesn't recognize him and her gaze doesn't shift when he calls to her. She only stops when he steps into her path, hands on her shoulders to hold her still. “Anna?” He tries again but when he lets go and moves to the side, she walks on.

“Come on, angel,” Crowley calls to him from a little way ahead and Castiel turns his sight from Anna who vanishes into the smoke.

There's a red haze in the distance and they make their way towards it. The ground grows uneven here, and the air hot. The smoke begins to sting at their eyes and it's difficult to breathe. Castiel is a little surprised when it finally begins to fade but in its place is overwhelming heat and air that feels thin and insubstantial.

The sounds of screams finally reach them but above that is the crackle of fire. Ahead the ground drops away into an uneven bowl where the air is clear as the smoke billows upwards and spreads out. Far below them in the cavern is what they've been looking for. All the most power supernatural creatures all submerged in flames. There are angels with their wings on fire, demons howling in agony, but though a finger of flames curls over the edge of the canyon to them, it doesn't burn them. Both of them are still alive.

“Great, so...I call this thing,” Crowley says, looking over the edge.

“I only want the angels.” A deep breath and Castiel spreads his wings and steps forward off the edge. He catches the draft of the hot air and glides down, the heat of the fire felt against him but as he'd hoped, it doesn't harm him.

He settles down on the rocky bottom which is pockmarked with pits of fire or with stalagmites. With caves and even deeper canyons. Everywhere is fire but it parts for Castiel when he walks forward. There are angels here and Castiel is surprised to recognize them as their vessels. He can see their grace, shaped to mimic a human form, like the souls in Heaven or Hell. Anna had been the same but he realizes now what he hadn't when looking at her. That her grace hadn't been mimicking anything, it had just been. He watches an angel and the fire that licks over it, forging it like a kiln into a new human form.

“Purgatory is all about purification.” Castiel frowns and turns his head back to look at Crowley, while Crowley watches on as the fire hardens the shell of the angel's grace and burns away anything inside of it. “The fire here, it burns out all the extra crap, all the blood lust and the righteousness. Leaves them all a bunch of empty shells just waiting for a couple of ingenious bastards like us to come fill them up with whatever we want. An army of super puppets in the making.”

“This isn't what I wanted,” Castiel says but Crowley is drawing his fingers along the back of his neck, a mocking gesture of comfort while the demon leans in to whisper against Castiel's ear.

“Think of it, angel. Your own army against your enemy? And one hundred percent loyal to you.” The angel covered in flames still has enough awareness in it to meet Castiel's gaze while the demon breathes against his neck. “You do know there's an archangel in here, don't you?”

“Gabriel.” The name said aloud shocks Castiel into action, shoving Crowley away from him and taking a step back. “Do whatever you want here, Crowley. As our deal, I will not stop you. But I’m getting these angels out of here.”

“Your choice if you want to waste a golden opportunity.”

The idea dances in front of Castiel's vision for a moment. Viable and tempting. An army to command however he wanted but there won't be any coming back from that. These angels, like the one hardening before his eyes, won't come back from this. Even the stability of Heaven isn't worth the corruption of his grace.

He thrusts his hand forward into the fire and at the touch of his living grace and his breathing vessel, and like a live creature itself, the flames shrink back. Fearful and pained. Castiel grasps at the angel left bare and trembling and the angel crumples forward into his arms. “I've got you,” Castiel whispers and he looks deeper into the angel's grace but there's no name there for him to read and no familiarity between them to recognize it by. The grace is a patchwork like threads of spider web and Castiel can't tell which angel this is. It's too late but Castiel takes the angel out of the pit anyway. The creature feels light in his arms, and Castiel sets them down by the doors he and Crowley came in through. They're closed now but Castiel can't think of another place to leave the angel in any degree of safety and he doesn't have time to look.

Leaving the angel huddled on the ground on the edge of purgatory, Castiel returns to the fire. He needs to find the archangel before he's out of time.

  
******   


Castiel walks the labyrinth that is the pit of fire. A maze where the flames always bend to his path while it engulfs everything else. He passes angels, some only just caught and still aware, while others hide in the shadows and nooks. All of them call out to him but Castiel moves on.

As he's beginning to wonder if maybe Crowley was wrong or maybe if he's too late and Gabriel is already wandering with the countless others through the smoke, mindless and lost, there's a bright flare of grace light that could only have come from something powerful. Castiel spreads his wings to take to the air and from this vantage, the chasm is vast but he knows the direction the flare of light came from and angles towards it.

It's not Gabriel he finds when he lands but a hard shot of powerful grace to his chest which screams agony and robs him of breath and Castiel realizes that he's not at all safe here. Safe from the flames, from the pull of purgatory, maybe, but he’s forgotten his enemies. Angels that are here because of him.

He gasps and his graying vision clears, solidifying the grace before him into the form of Zachariah. Zachariah but not shaped as the vessel Castiel had last seen. He's as a lion, great mane of shaggy hair obscuring the hatred in his eyes but Castiel knows him. Zachariah bares his long teeth and his sharp claws, his roar hurts Castiel's ears and makes him flinch in the moment that Zachariah tenses to pounce. Castiel’s wings scrape along the ground, his fingers in the dirt to scrabble back but it's too late, Zachariah is in the air and bearing down on him.

A sharp yelp that can’t have come from the lion and Zachariah is pulled up short, falling onto Castiel’s wing, his breath hot and threatening but he spins around and Castiel catches sight of something small, grey, tugging at Zachariah's tail while Zachariah spins to swipe at it. The creature – a dog? – jumps lightly out of the way and a short laughing bark seems to enrage Zachariah. This is not the first time these two have tangled. And Castiel guesses that like every other time, they're broken apart by a funnel of blue and orange flame snaking along the path.

The lion runs and the dog – coyote, Castiel realizes – scampers into hiding. Just like that and Castiel finds himself alone. It takes him a minute sitting on the dusty rock trail to realize that was Gabriel.

“Gabriel?” he calls down the path, where it winds between two cliff faces and into dark. An eerie howl answers him and Castiel gets to his feet to follow it. The trail is narrow and with his wings striking like flints along the high cliffs, he takes up most of it and thinks that this is good; the fire won't follow him in here.

It leads to a small cave, where Castiel has to duck his head. As he moves deeper into the cave, he finds the coyote again and as he watches, it morphs into the more familiar shape of Gabriel's long time vessel.

He sits cross-legged and naked as every other creature that Castiel has seen in this realm and he gestures for Castiel to join him. Castiel does, copying Gabriel’s cross-legged position and feeling awkwardness settling over him like a shroud that Gabriel only replaces with confusion.

“So, here again, huh bro?”

“Again?” Castiel asks but Gabriel moves on like Castiel hasn't spoken.

“Not so dead this time, though.” His gaze crawls up over Castiel's wings, dirty from the unnatural smoke and soot in the air and, he's sure, smoldering away at the tips. How long can he stay here before death becomes an issue? Gabriel looks envious before shaking his head and focusing back on Castiel's face. “Yeah, again. I'm gonna guess this is about your third time here. I caught you on your second stroll through.”

“What happened?”

“Ah, you walked right on in here, completely fucking crazy bastard that you apparently are and threw yourself into the hottest pillar of fire you could find. I tried to pull you back but...” Gabriel shrugs. “That fire took to you and dried you out faster than I've seen it do anything. And I'm gonna assume you walked through all that smoke up there, right? Seen what happened to the creatures after they've been purified?” Castiel nods, slow and confused and growing steadily more worried. “Hollowed you right out and sent you walking. Dunno what happened after that, I've been stuck down here. Gonna go ahead and assume you got reincarnated as you, though.”

“You're not making any sense,” Castiel says and Gabriel laughs a short barking laugh like the coyote and Castiel frowns, looks deeper. Realization strikes him with a widening of eyes. “You've been caught by the fire before.”

“Singed by it. But,” Gabriel lifts a finger with a smirk, “I'm crafty and I have all the best tricks and all the best hiding places.” Gabriel's words, so sure of himself, can't hide the cracks in his grace. Soon it will harden in the heat of this place even if the fire never touches him and he won’t be able to switch between forms so easily.

“I'm going to get you out of here.”

Gabriel laughs again, eyes straying to Castiel's wings. “My own knight in smoking wings? Come on now, Cas, you didn't come all the way down here just to rescue me because you missed my stellar company.” There's a resignation to Gabriel's tone that makes Castiel want to lie. To say that of course he came here for Gabriel but then, of course they both know he didn't.

“Heaven is at war. Raphael and many others are trying to restart the apocalypse.”

“I almost think I'd rather stay down here. Look, bro, there's only one way out of here for the dead anyway. You can't fight it, you can only hide from it for so long, and then that's it. Time’s up and then everyone here will be someone new.”

“You said I was reincarnated.”

“That's what the fire does. It turns us in to those empty shells you saw walking around up there, waiting to be filled up with something new. Something a lot more innocent and, whatever, 'pure'.”

“Souls.”

“That's right. All those creatures wandering around up there, they're just waiting to be something else.” Castiel's surprise must show on his face. “Our father is a very Green thinker. All about reusing. Same with all the human souls in Heaven, they're just there waiting to be something else. Some of us will be human. Others…well you saw our friend Zachariah. And myself.”

“You're going to be reincarnated as a coyote?”

Gabriel pulls a face. “I'll be gnawing on bones and licking my own balls before we know it .”

“No.” That can’t happen; Castiel did not come all this way for nothing. “We're angels.”

“One of us is,” Gabriel says and when he moves, Castiel doesn't try to stop him reaching out and running his fingers along the edge of Castiel's wing, stirring the energy and air around it. Gabriel's fingertips are blackened when he pulls back and Castiel can't stop the spark of fear.

“It's time to go,” Castiel decides and Gabriel doesn't argue when Castiel gets to his feet and pulls Gabriel along behind him, out of the small cave and back down the narrow path. To where he can spread his wings without interference and pull Gabriel along with him out of the pit, wings beating hard and lent speed by the up draft of the hot air, while the fire rises to try and snatch Gabriel back from his grip.

He flies them to where the smoke is a haze, to the edge of purgatory and where he left the other angel. The angel is still where Castiel has set him, curled to a ball on the ground and when Castiel sets Gabriel down, he approaches the angel to prod at its shoulder. The angel groans, a sad noise and when it realizes it's Castiel returned, the angel uncurls only to fist its hands in Castiel's jacket.

“That's Rathaniel,” Gabriel says, standing a few feet away and not looking entirely like he's there at all.

“I meant to come here and recruit an army.” Now he's unsure what he's doing here and the more he thinks about Anna, who is nothing, and the angel in his arms, who is broken, or even Gabriel, who seems lost, as he thinks about them, he thinks about Crowley's plan.

“Not very human are you, Castiel?” Castiel looks up from carefully detaching the angel – Rathaniel – and letting him curl back to the ground but one of his hands only wraps around Castiel's ankle. “Let me have your jacket,” Gabriel continues.

Castiel frowns but acquiesces, shrugging his trench coat off and handing it over to Gabriel. The action aches at his chest where Zachariah had struck him. He watches as Gabriel takes the coat but rather than put it on, he kneels next to Rathaniel and tucks it around the angel's shoulders.

“Do you want to stay here? To be reborn?” Castiel asks.

Gabriel shrugs, fussing over Rathaniel until he's sitting again and the angel is pulled onto his lap, all but catatonic in the way he reacts. “Sure, why not? Though I can't say dog is my first choice. Choosing was never really in the cards for us, though.”

“I chose.”

“Did you?”

Castiel pauses. The implications frighten him, upset the new balance he's made within himself, until he has to break the eye contact with Gabriel, to spread his wings and return to the fires.

He sees Crowley standing on the edge of the chasm and lands next to him. The demon is surveying his new domain; Castiel can see plans ticking over in his gaze. “How will you turn the empty vessels into soldiers?”

Crowley stops his survey long enough to give Castiel a side-long glance, eyebrow arched. “They're still what they are, you can never change it. Bring them back above ground before they get a new soul in them and they'll, y'know, re-energize. Course they won't be much good for anything but cannon fodder. But armies need pawns. Decoys, distractions. Lures.”

Raphael would come out of the woodwork if he knew Gabriel was walking again.

“And what's to stop them walking away from me on Earth?”

“You just have to get them out of the fire at the right time. Like that angel you've got back there.”

Castiel can still feel the imprint of Rathaniel's fingers locked around his wrist before he'd pulled away. “How do you know all this?”

“I do my research,” Crowley answers flippantly. “Now if you'll excuse me.”

The demon vanishes and leaves Castiel standing on his own with his doubts. With other crimes that he’s committed in the name of war and the greater good playing out behind his eyes again and again.

Dammit. He needs to _act_. He doesn’t have time to stand here so he doesn’t. He dives back into the fire, shimmers in the heat of the air for a moment before disappearing and faster than the flames or the cracking angels can discern, gathers all those he can from the pit and sets them by Gabriel and Rathaniel. They all just wait for him; even Gabriel stays, though his eyes cloud with doubt. He stays like Crowley said they would.

He leaves the angels that are too far gone or that would do no good to him. He can hear Zachariah call out in anger when he takes his final angel and doesn’t return.

  
******   


There are some hundred angels gathered when Castiel stops. Many killed within the last years of the apocalypse, ones that Castiel had known as those who had questioned and doubted though they had never gotten the chance to take it so far as he had. There are some he doesn’t know like Rathaniel but there are no old ones. Those have been lost to the fires long ago, either reincarnated or walking the realm through the smoke and waiting.

He spares a thought of regret for Anna, that he did not get here in time but she’ll be happier if she’s to be reborn as a human. How many of the angels standing in front of him now would have been happier? He shakes the thought away and seeks out Gabriel who still holds to Rathaniel draped in Castiel’s coat. The other angels part for his passage and there’s a strange reverence and obedience there.

“Got your army now?” Gabriel asks him and Castiel can’t fathom his disappointment.

“Yes.”

“And the demon you brought here? He’s got his?”

“How do you-“ But Gabriel nods his head and Castiel turns to find Crowley behind him.

“Guess this is goodbye?” Castiel nods, tense as Crowley steps into his space but again unresisting when Crowley pulls him down to kiss and Castiel can feel the contract lift now. Truce all but at an end. Crowley holds him closely and pulls back after too long. “Till later, sweetheart.”

Gabriel is watching him when Crowley is gone and Castiel, despite that he is the one clothed here, feels naked. He glares at Gabriel who won’t look away and snaps, “Let’s go.” He stretches his grace beyond his vessel, to encompass all the angels gathered though perhaps he holds Gabriel a little closer, and he draws them all from purgatory, as easy as drawing Dean from Hell.

  
******   


Castiel doesn't take them to Heaven - which is dangerous and violent - but to a safe haven on Earth, hidden from all but a trusted handful of angels. From here, he can hear Dean yelling at him, demanding an explanation that Castiel doesn't have to give. Not when he's still unsure of what he's doing or even what Crowley's doing. The best he knows is that Crowley does not want the Apocalypse or for Lucifer to be freed and Castiel seems to have firmly classified him in a non-threat status.

One thing at a time, he thinks, and looks over the gathered angels who are clearly waiting for what he wants them to do. They'll need some time to remember what they are, to be of any use. Their grace still molds to human forms.

The only one not mimicking a human is Gabriel who doesn't need to. He's been his vessel for so long his grace recreates it with hardly a thought and he stands in front of Castiel as the last time Castiel saw him down to the molecules of his clothes. But then he hasn't been engulfed by the fire as the other angels here have. Castiel is surprised the archangel remains here at all. Gabriel says nothing but watches him with interest. Castiel leaves them to check on Heaven and the lines.

He comes back in the night to a massacre.

There are no bodies left behind because there were no vessels. Just grace and now the wings of a hundred angels char the ground as the only remnants left behind. Castiel can taste their death in the air.

Rathaniel is left, still with Castiel’s trench coat draped over his shoulders, and Gabriel who stands above him, while Rathaniel’s hands wrap around Gabriel’s knees and Gabriel raises his blade to strike just one more killing blow.

Castiel acts, fury for the scene and his dead brothers and betrayal at Gabriel’s hands, all this effort for nothing! A beat of wings has him on Gabriel, tearing the blade from Gabriel’s grip and then throwing the archangel bodily across the now empty beach cove that Castiel had gathered them in. Gabriel hits the ground hard, leaves a furrow in the sand. Rathaniel tries to reach for Castiel but Castiel kicks him aside to focus on Gabriel, throwing himself at the archangel again but Gabriel is ready for him this time.

Gabriel’s wings are back, recovered from purgatory so quickly, and they knock the blade from Castiel’s hand so it’s lost somewhere beneath the waves of the ocean. Gabriel can fight when he has to, tricks from Lucifer, from the old Gods, from humans. All thrown at Castiel with fists and feet and wings. For all his new power, Castiel isn’t an archangel and he finds himself driven to his knees at Gabriel’s feet and it’s then Castiel remembers what he’s dealing with. Not a trickster. Something far older and more powerful and cleverer than Castiel could hope to be. Gabriel with righteous fury in his eyes and his wings arched wide and threatening. Castiel finds himself bowing his head to wait for judgment.

Instead, Gabriel’s human-warm palm settles on his head and Castiel startles under the touch while Gabriel sighs and crouches down in front of him. “Brother…”

“What did you do?”

Gabriel cups his chin and lifts his head. “Do you even remember what being human is, Cas?”

“I know that it’s not massacring a hundred of our family for no reason.” Castiel dares to snap, defy, muscles tensing as if he might dive back into the fight.

“And it’s not playing God and bringing back what should have stayed dead.”

“You were dead,” Castiel says quietly.

“What can I say? God's great messenger still had one more message to deliver.”

“He told you...”

Gabriel shrugs. “Someone had to.”

“Oh.” Castiel doesn't know whether to be more ashamed that he's failing in a task God thought he could do, or pleased that someone is still bothering to look out for him. Whether that’s Gabriel or their Father.

“You know what you need,” Gabriel says with this mischievous tone that makes Castiel dart his gaze up quickly. But Gabriel’s eyes are without malice so Castiel goes when Gabriel cups the back of his head and draws Castiel into his arms. It takes a long moment for Castiel to realize he's being _hugged_ , both of them kneeling in the wet sand, Gabriel's arms wrapped tight around his shoulders. Castiel doesn't relax until Gabriel's wings are there as well and then he breathes deep, a shudder and a hitch, and he's winding his arms around Gabriel in return and pressing his face down against Gabriel's neck.

They stay there until Rathaniel finds them again, fingers crawling up Castiel's legs and Castiel turns in the circle of Gabriel's arms, seeing what he hadn't before. The empty suffering in Rathaniel's eyes. The angel claws at him out of some sense of pain and Castiel looks away.

Gabriel's blade is under the water but Castiel still has his and Gabriel's arms fall away from him as he draws it out and shoves it into Rathaniel's breast. The dying light is weak but Rathaniel's wings join the others to mark the sand, impressions that the waves will wash away.

Castiel slumps back, jumping a little when his shoulder runs up against Gabriel's chest, the archangel still close and when he only tips his head in invitation, Castiel stays where he is. Gabriel's arms find him again and they stay until the rising tide laps at the edge of Gabriel's wing.

“Now what?” Castiel finally finds the courage to ask.

“Well...I guess I could stick around and help you with whatever the hell you think you're doing here.”

“And then?”

Gabriel laughs and nudges him admonishing. “One step at a time, kid. Looking too far into the future, prophesies and destinies, that's what got us into this mess. So...one step at a time. First step? Find somewhere dry.”

They drag themselves to their feet. One step at a time and Castiel can be at least a little assured that he made a good one here, if God even had known he would do it and told Gabriel to wait. He frees his wings to join Gabriel in the air and together, they find someplace dry. And if Gabriel's eyes appear as Rathaniel's had even a little, Castiel ignores it for now.

  
******   


  


  
******

 **  
_Earth_   
**

******

Gabriel takes them to a swank hotel room at the Mandalay Bay on the Vegas strip. Not that he thinks for a second that Castiel will take the time to appreciate it, which is why he doesn't even go for the biggest room in the place. There won't be any forty person parties going on here. But the room does feature a view, a huge bed to accommodate wingspans, and a huge living space to accommodate Gabriel's slight eccentricities. Castiel won't take the time but Gabriel's been down this road before.

The one that leads to death, violence and mayhem mayhem mayhem. It's Heaven's default setting, the constant circle and Gabriel has been through this. The divide. The fall. And now he gets to be resurrected just to deal with it all over again? He couldn't stop it last time; he doesn't know what could be so different this time.

Maybe it's just Castiel that's different. Spicy little hot-head.

Gabriel studies his brother, standing confused in the middle of the suite's living space. He looks like he might feel more comfortable in a motel room with hourly rates and Gabriel remembers when Castiel was new. When he stood on a beach with God and God took a fistful of sand and blew it into the ocean so a new garrison of angels grew. And Gabriel had known each of their grace and he'd watched them walk out of the surf and God had said “And these shall be yours, Gabriel. And it shall be good.”

But Gabriel had been new as well and he hadn't been so sure.

They had, all of them, walked up to him with trust born into their beings. Gabriel had loved them the way he was meant to.

Castiel doesn't look at him with ingrained trust or love now. That's a bubble long since burst and it makes Gabriel grin while he steps forward and drapes his arm across Castiel's shoulders.

“What are we doing here?” comes Castiel's inevitable protest but Gabriel is busy leading him – forcefully – through the room and into the bedroom, pushing Castiel down onto the soft mattress and the warm duvet. “We have work to be doing. Raphael-”

“Will be around tomorrow. And the day after that and the day after that. Just like the war which'll be around forever. You can't stop it, Cas.”

Castiel stares up at him but Gabriel's hand grasping his shoulder keeps him down and Castiel doesn't try to fight against it. “I am not giving up,” Castiel bites out in all the righteous indignation an angel can summon. Gabriel rolls his eyes because it sounds a lot like a sullen tantrum.

“You can't stop it, _Cas_ ,” he tries again, “if you've got yourself so strung out you actually go through with stupid ideas like stealing angels from purgatory. Raphael and the war can wait. They aren't going to destroy themselves or the world in a few days. Shit like that takes awhile.”

“It wasn't a stupid idea,” Castiel mutters, which just strengthens the image of the sullen child whose toys have been messed with, dropping his gaze down to the white duvet beneath him.

“Just...do me a favor. I'm older and wiser so listen to me on this one thing.” Castiel gives a doubtful nod, a clear sign of how tired he must feel and Gabriel starts by pushing the suit jacket from Castiel's shoulders. The trench coat is gone, somewhere on the beach along with Gabriel's sword. Neither of them great loses, Gabriel doesn't want to wrap his fingers around that hilt again anyway. He didn't want to do it back then, either, and as he divests Castiel of his tie and button down shirt, he still feels the resistance of it against his brothers' chests.

Castiel must be reading the flickers of upset through his grace because he asks, while Gabriel drops to one knee at his feet to unlace Castiel's shoes, “Are they all returned to purgatory?”

“Yep. Right back where they started.” It was the right thing to do. It doesn't mean Gabriel has to enjoy having done it but that's the role of archangel, the role of big brother. Do the dirty work no one else wants to. Until you just can't take it anymore.

Fall with Lucifer or kill him. How was he supposed to make that choice, when he had been new and the world had been newer? Destiny forced him to make it anyway.

Gabriel startles at Castiel's hand resting at the top of his head and realizes he's paused in his motions so he returns to pulling Castiel's shoes from his feet. “And you? Do you have to go back?”

“Not yet.” Maybe eventually but Gabriel doesn't know that part yet. He grins up at Castiel. “Don't worry your pretty blue wings about it, little bro. I'll hold your hand for awhile yet.”

He strips Castiel down to his boxers with minimal complaint and Castiel even lends a hand at the end, gets with the program although he looks baffled enough to not have any clue why Gabriel is doing this. Just getting his clothes off or helping at all. Gabriel hopes Castiel only questions the first one because he's still on the fence about the second when “God commanded it” just doesn't seem to cut it for any of them anymore. Because it's the only option left might be a better fit but that’s not entirely true either.

With clothes strewn out on the floor, Gabriel manhandles Castiel into the bed, Castiel looking more bemused by the second. “This is a waste of time. We don't sleep,” Castiel protests even while Gabriel is fussing with the covers to draw them up to Castiel's chin and there's that sulky child again. Gabriel ruffles his hair.

“There's nothing in the rules to say that we can't.”

“I don't like to sleep.”

“Fuck, you're stubborn.” Gabriel stands back, can see by the tense lines of Castiel's bare shoulders where they're still exposed that the second he turns his back, Castiel is going to be on his feet again. So Gabriel strips off, feels each layer of clothing fall away, feels Castiel's eyes on him but it's not their vessels they need to worry about exposing.

Gabriel climbs into the bed next to Castiel and remembers when they were new.

  
******   


The new garrison stands before Gabriel in perfect formation. All of them shimmering bright, all of them silver and white except for the edges of them. Here they are red or gold or blue or black. The manifestation of their aura, the crackling electric energy that will allow them to travel through space and time in an eye blink. A dozen of the new angels are all gold but varying and none as brilliantly colored as Gabriel.

Gabriel who they all look to with adoration and obedience but not so much as they do to God.

Gabriel walks among them for the first time and aside from color, there's not much difference between them. Except this one, deep midnight blue, this one is the same as the others but for the sign stamped out on his grace. A marker that Gabriel has only seen upon himself, and the rest of the original four. This one has a destiny ahead of him.

“You are mine,” he tells them all, not with a voice or with words, but it's understood all the same.

It's a long time before any of them learn voice and words and individuality.

In the beginning, Gabriel can wind among any of them. They're always near. Some thousand angels all told and Gabriel knows them deeply. He can twine their graces together, flawless and beautiful, until they know a sort of pleasure, a laughter that has no sound. He can meld deep blue into his golden strands until they explode into a cascade of energy.

They're all so perfect and so beautiful and Gabriel can't keep his grace off any of them.

None of it lasts. Their grace doesn't stay unblemished. Time moves somehow, in some passage that none of them pay attention to. An eye blink or a millennium, only the Lord knows.

There's something new on the horizon and within them.

Their grace changes. It holds shape. Suddenly each of Gabriel's angels is different to the next. This one is tall, this one shapelier, this one has long teeth and this one might be considered handsome. Their grace is still perfect, they are all still beautiful. But their colorful auras change, no longer surrounding them but cascading in strands of energy from their backs.

God snaps his fingers and a universe is born. From it raises creatures and Gabriel watches them grow and evolve and sees that the creatures mimic the new shape of their grace. Or do they mimic the creatures?

“Watch them very carefully. They will be your responsibility,” God tells the original four of them.

And it will be good.

The first cracks begin to show through the grace of Lucifer and his garrison in turn.

  
******   


There are scars all through every angel's grace now. Gabriel has been long since used to seeing it and has his own fair share of them. The fire of purgatory would have wiped them clean, healed them, and made him fit to be new again. A thought that entices and scares him. He's not sure he wants to go through all this from the beginning.

He takes a closer look at Castiel's, remembers what it used to be with the perfect clarity of angels. Shimmering white and midnight blue. He's so busy following the spider webs of old pain – here the slow spread of poisonous torture, the shattering experience of death, the heavy splintering of _too much_ \- that he doesn't realize he's snaking his own grace out along the pathways of Castiel's story. Not until Castiel twitches by his side and Gabriel actually turns his head to take in Castiel's vessel and the wide-eyes.

“Sorry... Not a fan of getting a little handsy anymore, huh?” No, of course not, none of the angels are anymore. Not that Gabriel knows, not that Gabriel has been near another angel in decades. Then all of a sudden he's standing up to them, taking orders that might be from God or might be from his own head, and feeling up an old soldier. Gabriel should have stayed out of the bed and as it is, he turns onto his side away from Castiel, throwing his own sulky little tantrum that angels are prone to, and keeping his grace firmly to himself.

Castiel doesn't seem so intent to remain hands off though and soon enough, his palm finds Gabriel's back, cupping to a shoulder blade, and Gabriel can feel the heat of the vessel and the chilling brush of grace as Castiel shifts closer. “I do remember, you know.”

“Do you?” Gabriel doesn't mean for his voice to sound so hoarse. He left this behind eons ago and he likes it better that way.

“Things were different when you left. Of course there was war and the aftermath of it. But...no one ever took as much pleasure as you taught us to in the simple joy of a touch or a bond. Even when we were new, you were different from the others.”

“Good different or weird different?” Gabriel asks with a snort, determined Castiel shouldn't be the only stubborn obtuse one but now Castiel has taken up where Gabriel left off as well, by stroking thin tendrils of grace along the scars in Gabriel's. Here is betrayal and abandonment; here is loneliness of ages, and death. Gabriel's grace knows death as well. It almost hurts when Castiel's touches him but Gabriel wriggles back, until Castiel takes the hint and wraps their vessels close.

“You hurt me last time,” Castiel says and Gabriel can stretch his grace out and find that Castiel's knows betrayal as well.

“I know.” Gabriel wants to say that Castiel is hurting him right now, pushing their grace to slot alongside each other but he keeps his mouth shut. Pushes back because it's a stupid horrible temptation that Gabriel can only resist when it isn't directly in front of him. All around him.

Screw it. Castiel's vessel is molded to his back, right down to their feet, but it hardly matters. He thinks he groans at the release as he reaches out, grace over grace. And under and in and around. Everywhere, exploding from human containers and into each other.

  
******   


Lucifer teaches Gabriel to raise his new fingers and snap them. He teaches Gabriel many things. Tricks and subterfuge and it was Lucifer that had taught him in the beginning, how two graces felt much better as one. Things that Gabriel has shown others, always returning to his big brother to sooth away his jealousy. Lucifer was the first one out of them to feel such things.

Abominations, Michael had said. To feel ill of each other and their fathers creations. Not that Michael felt good towards either of these things and he'd often look down upon Gabriel for the joy he expressed so openly, just as much as he looked down on Lucifer's jealousy.

“You'd be nothing without me,” Lucifer says and he throws his arm out to encompass some of Gabriel's garrison. “They would have nothing without you.”

Gabriel looks out over the landscape. They're on the ice fields and for all the color hidden in the depths, Gabriel only really cares about the three angels currently in their view. Uriel's fingers drag through the blue energy of Castiel's wings which swirls and sparks and drifts into nothing. Anael lays draped across their legs, scratching patterns into the ice. They lounge in their human shapes in a way that angels of Michael or Raphael's garrisons find unfathomable. Only Gabriel's and Lucifer's angels will act this way.

And now, what Lucifer asks of him. “It's too much. This is our home, Lucifer.”

“We were always different. We never belonged here. Side with me.” Lucifer's wings, the golden energy of them, wrap around Gabriel, sink into him.

The temptation is there. Lucifer is good at temptation and sometimes his arguments make sense. The planet they're set to watch over, the creatures that inhabit it. They breed disease, war, evil. None of this had existed until mankind was brought to light. Because God had said “Let there be light.” And there was and it was...not good.

“This is home.”

“Bring them with you. They'll follow you,” Lucifer argues because he knows home for Gabriel isn't Heaven. Home is those three angels and a thousand others.

“They're better off here,” Gabriel says but he's not so sure why he's arguing. He just knows that he has to.

“This is your only chance.”

“No.”

Gabriel's not sure he ever actually expected Lucifer to do it.

  
******   


Their bodies haven't moved but their hearts pound, their breath is quick. Their grace thrums between them and they don't need words. Even after the rise and crest of energy. They settle and Gabriel allows himself to hope for the first time since the Fall. To remember for a moment what joy feels like along with trust and family. He sleeps though he shouldn't and when he rises, Castiel is gone from the bed.

He finds the other angel standing by the large picture window overlooking the Vegas strip, his palms spread out flat to the thick glass, frustration obvious in his eyes. “Thinking of doing a runner?” Gabriel asks behind him and Castiel flinches before turning. Gabriel has his arms crossed tight across his chest.

“I would have come back.” Gabriel doesn't answer. “I need to check the lines. We're at war.” As if Gabriel has forgotten or as if it's ever been any different.

“Fill me in then.”

“Gabriel...”

But Gabriel waves his hand, snaps his fingers so he's dressed and in his other appears a bottle of whiskey. The best. He screws the cap off, takes a swig and hands it out to Castiel. “Go on.”

Castiel takes the drink and after a drawn out pause, explains about Raphael and the apocalypse which is still breathing down their necks. Put on hold but not stopped.

“So what's on the rails then, boss?” It's not easy to say, to throw himself in with this when every fiber of grace in him is screaming to run. Run and hide, it's what he does best and he does not want to see his family continue to kill each other. To have a hand in that when over just the last twenty-four hours, he's killed enough of them. But he made this decision before he died. He stood up and now he'll kneel down before this angel, marked since creation.

“I'm not the archangel,” Castiel protests, unsure and scared. He should be scared. He should feel all of it.

“You're the one driving this crazy train. You're in charge. What are we doing?”

Checking the lines. Gabriel drops the protective seal he'd placed around the room, there to keep humans out and to keep Castiel in, and they fly together. It's the first time Gabriel flies with any of his brothers since he left. He just wants this over with and there's no easy way to get that.

  
******   


Gabriel stands with his wings flared out into imposing arcs. Firm and unmovable, this is his decision and he knows that at his back are a thousand angels who won't turn from his side. But in front of him there's Michael, even more stubborn, more righteous because Gabriel has never been righteous. He's been different. He's wanted pleasure, peace, and the sound of laughter.

“Lucifer is opposing our father's will!”

Gabriel knows this. He's watched Lucifer's jealousy twist into something new, shattering off into a thousand different emotions that Gabriel hasn't found names for yet. It's happening, he thinks, to all of them. The original four have found their niches, their emotions or motivators, and they're all splintering apart.

“But I'm not.”

Michael's move forward is hostile and Gabriel's wings sink that Michael would threaten him. “You oppose him by doing nothing. You're with us or you're against us. There is no middle ground.”

Gabriel can't find an answer because if it's one thing that Michael and Lucifer have in common, it's that they see in black and white. Even their wings don't show the color of the other angels. Of Gabriel's gold and Raphael's crimson red. Michael's flare out white behind him, barely seen against the blinding light of his grace.

It's made worse that whichever side he picks, he knows his garrison will follow him without question. He can't make a decision that could land them outside their father's, or even Michael's, good will. He has to stay for them, he has to stay and fight this war against his brother. His lover and his friend.

“Tell me where you want us, Michael.”

  
******   


It's the first time Gabriel has returned to Heaven since he abandoned it. He can feel the heavy displacement of air from the energy of Castiel's wings beside him. Their spans overlap sometimes and Gabriel takes some comfort from it. Other than Castiel and Lucifer, these angels have not seen him in thousands of years, and part of him worries they won't even recognize him. Part of him worries they will.

Castiel sets them down in the middle of what was once a great city. Now there's a crack running down the middle of it and the buildings are falling in. There's ash clouding the river. In the distance, plumes of smoke rise up.

“Is that...?”

“The garden, yes.” Castiel speaks impassive as he stares across the distance. There's a veritable ocean between this city and the greater one, the one that had been created around him. Gabriel could close his eyes and see clearly the clash of angel's in the air above the churning waters. They churn now as well, violent swells and waves while the wind whips across the surface and all around them. Heaven reacts to the ill of the angels in it.

“Where is everyone?”

“On the beaches. I'm not...entirely sure you should show yourself yet. Raphael won't know you've surfaced.”

“I'm your secret weapon, huh?” Gabriel says with a quirked eyebrow, ignoring the unsettled spark across his wings while Castiel nods all fierce determination. A warrior in a way Gabriel is sure he never taught the angel to be when the thing he remembers most, even during the heat of the war, is Castiel's relaxed days on the ice fields with Anael and Uriel. “I guess I'll just wait here.”

“I won't be gone long.”

Gabriel waits while Castiel has left, walking along the abandoned and cracking streets. There's more than one imprint of wings. There's more than one blade impaled into the jasper stone that is the foundation of the city, some still smoking and up here they will for a long while yet. This city was teaming once with the song of laughter, with the unabashed spread of wings, the unashamed touch of grace.

This was his city once. His garrison's station.

He walks on until he finds the cracked remnants of a jasper fountain. The river runs above and fills it but the sides are fractured and the ashy water spills out and soaks his feet.

And this is his first trip home since he left? Had he expected it to be different?

  
******   


Lucifer finds him once, as Heaven splits in half and taints the air and water and cities, and Gabriel sometimes thinks that he must be as well. Split and tainted. He stands on the edge of a recent battlefield, where the air still crackles with dying grace, and he can sense the other angel's arrival before Lucifer’s wings wrap around him.

“You hurt me,’ Lucifer says on his still melodious voice. Gabriel wouldn't think it just to hear him that Lucifer has killed hundreds of their brothers, either by his own hands or by the hands of those who trust him. Gabriel still stupidly trusts him.

“You do the same to me, brother,” Gabriel says

It's Lucifer's final attempt to sway Gabriel's decision but Gabriel has made his and it's not what any of them want. Lucifer leaves empty handed and Gabriel walks the beaten road until Michael casts Lucifer into the pit along with all the angels that opposed Heaven at Lucifer's side.

Gabriel can't stay after that.

Half of his garrison is dead. Their city in ruins. For the first time, Gabriel feels angry and he embraces it as he lands among the humans. They were the cause of this. Their violence and stupidity and arrogance. Gabriel hunts down the worst of them and takes all that he can from them.

  
******   


Castiel finds Gabriel still at the fountain, trailing his fingers through the stained water, and he stands a few paces off. “We should move on. I brought you this.” Castiel holds out a new blade for him, shining and clean, but its seen battle just like all of them and Gabriel stands to take it in his grip.

“Where next?” Gabriel asks.

“To see the Winchesters.”

A grin catches Gabriel by surprise, his eyebrows lifting. “Bet they'll be glad to see me,” Gabriel says sarcastically, though in truth he kind of misses them. He wonders what they might be like without death breathing down their necks and only finds out when he and Castiel land in their motel room that death really does just follow them around.

Dean jumps half out of his skin when Castiel appears in front of him and he doesn't even look at Gabriel for a full heartbeat. “Jesus, Cas, I've been calling for- Gabriel?”

“Hey, Deano. Miss me?”

“...I miss the days when people didn't keep popping out at me from the dead.” Gabriel feels the sting and rolls his eyes, resisting the urge to curl his fingers back around the blade that's tucked out of sight and bury it in Dean's chest. Castiel looks so furious for a moment that Gabriel thinks he might be channelling the other angel after all. That purgatory hollowed him out just enough... Then Castiel is schooling his expression as Dean goes on. “I need you to help Sam.”

“There's nothing more I can do for him.” And there’s genuine regret to Castiel’s tone that even softens Dean’s expression.

“He locked himself in the bathroom the moment I got him here and refuses to come out. He won't even say anything.”

Castiel pauses a second, head cocked to the side. “He's still alive.”

“Well that's reassuring,” Dean snaps.

“I can't help him and that's not what I came here for.”

“Then why did you?”

“To say goodbye. It's time to return to this war indefinitely.”

Dean sighs, takes in the two of them for such a long moment that Gabriel feels like shifting on his feet but all he does is meet Dean's resigned stare. “I guess at least you actually said it this time. Maybe Gabe can teach you some mann- No. What am I saying? Just don’t be strangers, okay?”

“Of course not,” Castiel replies and Gabriel throws in some generic agreement since he’s pretty sure by this point that this is a forever sort of goodbye and Dean’s probably secretly glad at the prospect of getting angels out of his life for good. Hell, it’ll probably be the best thing an angel could ever do for him.

Castiel moves with a static shift of energy as his wings lift but Dean clears his throat, slides his gaze between them, and Gabriel wishes they could just get on with it. He’s supposed to hate Dean, not reluctantly admire the kid. It’d be a hell of a lot better for all of them if they could just be done with each other. “Just…thanks, okay?”

A minute nod from Castiel and they’re out of there, wingtips brushing together again as they fly. “Was there a point to all that?” Gabriel asks, looking across at Castiel as they fly the Earth’s energy pathways.

“I thought you could use a reminder of why we’re doing this.”

“You’re kind of a manipulative SOB aren’t you?”

“Did it work?”

Gabriel closes his eyes for a short moment. “Let’s go kill some evil angels.”

Even if evil never had anything to do with it. It's time to start thinking black and white or Earth, along with those boys back there, is gonna end up like Heaven. And that will be two homes gone to Hell.

  
******   


Word slips out quickly. Castiel has an archangel at his side, one of the original four, and when Raphael is thought to be the only one still walking, that's big news. It ruffles feathers like tornadoes and there's hardly a supernatural creature that doesn't take notice. A fight on Earth between Raphael and Gabriel could well be as deadly as one between Michael and Lucifer and Gabriel finds himself wondering if this is always what it was about. A brother must kill another but not the two they'd all believed.

It brings Crowley back to them and it says something about how ravaged Heaven is when a demon – a king of Hell – can walk into Gabriel's jasper city without being destroyed at the gates. But Crowley comes alone and when the gathered angels – selected leaders of their ranks – raise their wings in anger, Castiel shouts at them.

“Hold yourselves. We have no quarrel with Hell.”

“Mighty kind of you to say.” Crowley steps up to them casually, unconcerned with the dozen angels gathered in the city center where the fountain resides. “I thought we might talk.” He glances to the others, allows his gaze to linger on Gabriel. “Privately. Though you can bring your guard dog too if you like.”

“Woof,” Gabriel deadpans in response but he does go along, after Castiel has dismissed the gathered angels back to their posts.

They return to Earth, the closest thing they have to neutral grounds even though it's not at all and Gabriel, at least, feels more at ease here. They stand outside Crowley's mansion, walls covered in Enochian warding and Gabriel lets out an impressed whistle.

“Not planning to assassinate us and hide the evidence are you?”

Crowley laughs. “Not at all. The enemy of my enemy. Follow me, boys.” He steps forward, through the high wall's gate, past the warding magic and leaves Gabriel and Castiel to exchange dubious glances. “Well?” he says with an arched eyebrow when he glances back and finds the two angels still on the other side of the wall.

Gabriel shrugs. There's no ill intent in the sigils or in the demon, so they step through.

“A little allowance in the wards,” Crowley explains as he leads them up to the mansion and into the dimly lit entrance hall. “Just for you two.”

They follow Crowley through a series of hallways, coming in the end to a sitting room, darkly furnished and dimly lit. It takes Gabriel a second to notice the Hellhound sitting in the corner, but when he does, he calls it over. The dog rises and comes. Gabriel settles back in one of the over large leather chairs.

“Couldn't get a barcalounger in here, huh?” he says as he scratches at the Hellhound's massive head and it drools a bit of blood onto his lap. He's well past being disturbed by any ichor.

Castiel remains standing. “Can we please get on with things?” And Crowley rolls his eyes, sharing what might be a conspiratorial look with Gabriel, if Gabriel had any clue what was going on.

“You angels are no fun. Can't even interest you in a drink?” He lifts a snifter of brandy from a liquor cabinet to the side of the room in gesture. When both of them refuse, Crowley sets it aside, but even Gabriel finds himself too curious to bother indulging. This game and these rules are not the ones they played by millennia ago. Change always has interested Gabriel.

“It's just like I said,” Crowley says. “The enemy of my enemy. If Raphael wants to release Lucifer then I'd very much like to stop it happening. I like the way things are now and not just because I'm king of Hell. I like this Earth. I'm in a business. I can't do that business if Lucifer gets free and wipes out all the currency. Or if Michael does.”

“You propose an alliance. With Hell,” Castiel says, skepticism making him scoff.

Crowley gives a single nod of his head. “My armies are at your disposal. I tried to strengthen them for you but I hear that didn't go over well.” He gives Gabriel a pointed look.

“The dead played their part already, they don't deserve to be dragged in again.”

“I guess you two would know something about that.” He looks them both over with something like pride. “And just look how dark you're turning out.”

“By any means,” Gabriel says, a shot at Castiel that hits home when Castiel shoots him a sideways glance though his stance doesn't change.

Crowley goes on. “Anyway, I expect you'll be less concerned with the dead demons fighting your battle than the dead angels. So have them.”

“At what cost?” Castiel asks and Crowley focuses on him.

“Just make sure you kill Raphael. And get all the damn rogue angels out of my territory. I don't need to be competing with them for souls.”

Gabriel wishes that he could be surprised when Castiel nods in agreement. But he's seen home now, watched the angels tear everything apart. It doesn't matter what they do in the end, it's still going to come down to archangel against archangel. Brother against brother. It'll still end bloody. But maybe this can buy them the edge they need. Maybe this is the change they need to finally end it.

He watches as Crowley crosses the room, as Castiel goes with the tug and pull into a kiss that looks familiar but this isn't their first deal. With a spark of possessiveness, he watches Castiel's grace flare under the magic of the contract.

“The battles must not happen on Earth,” Castiel says before it's done, against Crowley's mouth and the demon's expression turns down before he gives a nod of ascent and the contract shifts into something new. Crowley jerks Castiel up against him tighter with an arm around his waist and Gabriel is half-ready to force them apart when Crowley breaks away and laughs.

“You're getting better at that.”

Gabriel _is_ surprised when Castiel reacts to the sneer in Crowley's voice, shoving Crowley back against the wall. A second kiss is a crush of lips that lasts only an instant before Castiel steps back swiftly. “We have work to do.”

Even Crowley looks winded this time and alongside the possession, Gabriel feels a spark of pride. Crowley straightens himself, returning to his snifter of brandy and pouring each of them a finger without asking this time. “All work and no play make angels have a stick up their ass.”

They each take their drink.

In the next days, they amass the armies of Hell.

  
******   


Castiel leaves Gabriel to watch over Crowley and their new allies.

Gabriel's never had the pleasure of a firsthand visit to Hell but...he's certain it shouldn't be like this and he tells Crowley as much.

“And what were you expecting?” Crowley asks and Gabriel shrugs.

“I dunno. Screams, chaos. Kind of torn between freezing cold or boiling heat. Maybe it'd switch back and forth spontaneously. Not...this.”

It _looks_ how he might have expected it on first glance, which is not much different from Heaven in places. There are ice fields and barren lands. But patterns of blood are frozen in the ice and it soaks the thawed ground outside of it. There are cities constructed of Earth and stone. And...body parts and bones. There are Hellhounds standing guard like junk yard dogs. Human souls in their own personal Hells, like the souls in Heaven. And demons. Thousands and thousands of demons, more than there could ever be angels.

But past all that? There's order. There are no screams, no pleading. Gabriel watches the demons move among them and they all seem to have a job to do, business to attend to. It's possibly more traumatizing than if he'd walked into what Hell should be like. “I feel like I walked into a law firm or something.”

Crowley laughs. “I told you, I'm here to run a business.”

“It's scary.”

“How similar Heaven and Hell can really be? Let me show you the armies.”

They walk from one city to another, a large stone castle dominating this one. Crowley takes him into the highest tower to overlook the lands and in the distance, he can see fire. A hole in the walls of Hell and there must be a thousand demons all guarding it. A funnel of the fire licks in occasionally and draws a shiver from Gabriel.

“Is that purgatory?”

“Mhm. Forced a gateway. Anything we need to get Raphael is straight through there.”

The fire licks inside Hell again, testing the demons and drawing away. Hell's climate is tepid and Gabriel imagines he can feel the heat of purgatory. It feels angry to him and maybe he's spent too long as a Pagan but there are some things that shouldn't be messed with. Not even for an archangel or a king of Hell. “You think that was a good idea?”

“I think we're out of options.”

“Have you taken anything from it yet?”

“Just the angels but you put those back. And you, of course,” Crowley says with a long slide of his gaze over Gabriel.

The flames break free again, a tunnel of them that scorches across the ground until it's blazing along the wall that surrounds the castle before it withdrawals. It leaves behind a black furrow in the ground, brings up a rise of screams that Gabriel had thought was missing, and some hundred demons have fallen.

“Well that's new,” Crowley says, unconcerned to anyone that can't see past the human he carts around with him. But Gabriel can see past that, into an agitated swirling of black smoke. The same agitation hums within his own human form.

“I think we'd better get out of here.”

Gabriel says it but he doesn't move, his hands pressed on the high ledge of the castle while he stares down into the entrance of purgatory. He's sure he sees a golden eye in the flames and the moment he fixes on it, it fixes on him and Gabriel freezes.

There's a raucous scream that doesn't come from any of the demons and three tunnels of fire come bursting into Hell, scattering the demons that can't do anything against it. They twist and form together and from them, a bird of flame launches into the air. It circles once, massive head tilted, eyes searching and when they find Gabriel a second time, it screams again and dives for him.

“Holy-“ Gabriel cuts off, snaps his wings out in blazes of light and takes off from the castle top, feeling the heat of the bird engulfing where he'd just been.

And he can't outrun it. There's no cheating death and Gabriel knows. Pagan or angel, he knows, and he knows he skipped a damn big part of it. His wings crack with the noise of whips as he darts across Hell but the bird is on him, boiling the air in its wake and Gabriel keeps falling into the drafts. He thinks Hell must be destroyed in its path as well and somewhere below him, Crowley is yelling his name.

He risks a glance behind him and sees the bird's white hot talons stretching out for him, a second from ripping at his wings and Gabriel does the only thing he can think to do. He folds his wings, curls into a ball and falls. The bird’s talons close a second too late, scorching through the edges of Gabriel's wing. It dives to pursue him and it's still there when Gabriel slams into the blood soaked ground and he can feel the heat of its great wings curving over him.

It screams waves of fire into the air and across the landscape the ice fields start to melt.

“Hey!”

Gabriel's vision swims when Castiel appears on the scene, Crowley at his side, and the bird hesitates as they approach Gabriel. Castiel is out of his vessel, blinding light, and even still, the bird dwarfs him. Yet it pauses when he steps forward, unwilling to go after the living.

Crowley steps between him and the scene, kneeling down. “Let’s get you out of here.”

The bird gives an outraged cry and Gabriel only has a second to catch the devastation of Hell. The castle they had stood on is engulfed in flame. But Crowley touches him and they're gone, back to a green field on Earth, the bird screaming in their absence before it flees Hell, taking all traces of fire and leaving it black and smoking.

  
******   


  


  
******

 **Hell**

 ******

Crowley might be feeling a little less than collected. He's in some damn Vegas suite and there's an archangel dripping silver ichor all over the sheets of the single king-sized bed while another angel fusses over him. Oh, and there's the fact a damn fire bird just destroyed every scrap of his hard work in Hell.

“Do you have any _idea_ how long it took me to do those renovations?”

Castiel tosses a glare back over his shoulder before refocusing down on Gabriel but the archangel is limp and unresponsive, breathing deep and bleeding a sluggish flow of grace.

“He'll be fine,” Crowley says in a way that's meant to come out scathing or sarcastic or absent. Not with a vague sort of worry but he can’t help it. He kind of likes these two angels.

It takes a moment while Castiel fusses over Gabriel, jammed back into his vessel so it’s human hands he lays over Gabriel’s chest. A pulse of energy cauterizes the rips in Gabriel’s wings. The silver shimmers and vaporizes, dead traces of his grace vanishing into mist. Castiel’s answer isn’t the most reassuring one anyway when it comes, “He needs rest.” Which doesn’t mean a thing.

“What in God's name happened back there?”

“I don't know. Purgatory is beyond my realm. And yours.” Castiel locks eye contact with Crowley for a moment. “We can't take anything from there again.” And the warning for what might happen if Crowley tries is clear.

“Preaching to choir, boy.” Whatever that thing was, it destroyed a good portion of Hell. Ruined an army Crowley had been a little proud of, not to mention one of his favorite castles. And there went the ace up their sleeve, with the archangel up the other now looking worse for wear. “I'm trying to preserve Hell, you know, not- What are you doing?”

Castiel has started shrugging off his trench coat, straightening out to heel off his shoes, and as Crowley blinks, Castiel pulls his tie off. It all lands in a messy uncaring pile at his feet. Angels. They're all messy chaos when it comes down to it and Crowley fights the urge to snap at Castiel to keep things clean. Hell had been disordered with an archangel at the top. Heaven has been barely ordered chaos since creation. Crowley is just the demon to put things right. Maybe it's the human in him and maybe it's the human in these two.

The way it's human of Castiel to tuck himself close to Gabriel but very angel of him not to give a damn that Crowley is staring. When Castiel does finally acknowledge Crowley again, he only says “Gabriel has done similar for me. You can stay if you like.”

Crowley's not so sure he likes the idea he's that nonthreatening to the angel and shakes his head while Gabriel slurs a sarcastic remark. “Threesome, Cas?” But Gabriel's eyes are still closed and he's fooling no one with flippant remarks. The pain he suffers is clear on his human face. Castiel doesn't seem to quite get the joke anyway.

“Tempting as it is... I've an empire to check on, boys. Maybe later.”

A thought brings Crowley back to Hell and leaves the angels to whatever sort of platonic cuddling they want to get up to.

The place is a mess where the fire bird cut through. Smoking and black and pitted with craters. Crowley supposes that it fits the landscape well enough but he's still annoyed about the castle. The demons on the other hand are all picking themselves up, unharmed by the passage of the bird other than the initial shock. Purgatory can only hurt the dead. Or the twice dead, as demons would have it.

Every flame has been snuffed out, nothing but wisps of fading smoke left behind and as Crowley approaches the hole to purgatory, it's gone. The crater is still there and the flat land that mimics so much of Hell. But the fire is gone, the smoke is fading, and inside of the crater there are no dead demons or angels or any creature at all. Even the ones that had hid in the shadows and caves are gone.

Crowley stands on the edge of the vacant crater and wonders what the plan is going to be now.

  
******   


“Purgatory's gone,” Crowley says when he's back at the Vegas suite.

The two angels haven't moved much. Gabriel is still as water and covering him is the shimmering energy of Castiel's wing. The feel of it in the enclosed space of the room is enough to set Crowley's teeth on edge and the hairs at the back of his neck stand up. Inside the calm exterior of his vessel, it excites him. It's tantalizing, something powerful at his fingertips, stretched out and maybe a little too careless in his presence.

“I hope you're not thinking of breaking our alliance so soon,” Castiel says.

Crowley looks up from where he'd been trying to pick out the finer details in the electric shimmer of Castiel's wing and finds the angel's sharp gaze looking into him. He quirks a half-grin. “Of course not, angel. I still need you.”

“What did you say about purgatory?”

“It's gone. Up and left nothing but a big empty crater,” Crowley says with a sigh, dragging a chair over to the side of the bed so he can recline back with his feet kicked up onto the plush quilt. Gabriel stirs at the brief jostle to the bed.

“We threatened it and it left.” Gabriel's hoarse voice cuts in, as pissy as only an archangel can sound, and both Crowley and Castiel look down. Castiel's wing shifts out of existence and then he's helping Gabriel to sit up against the headboard. “Don't you two get it?” Gabriel asks when he's met with silence from the room. “Fire bird? Resurrection? The damn thing is a Phoenix.”

“Purgatory is a place. Not a sentient being,” Castiel argues, worried eyes on the archangel he's still pressed close to.

Gabriel snorts without sympathy. “My wings beg to differ.”

Silence settles around them for a moment, taking in this new piece of information, putting it together and coming up with a deck of cards that is decidedly stacked against them.

“Right. So...we've got a giant bird that probably wants to hunt you down.” Crowley inclines his head to Gabriel who nods. “An archangel who by now wants to kill us all. And if he succeeds in that and frees Michael and Lucifer, you can bet your pretty wings we're not the only ones striking deals.”

“You think Michael and Lucifer...?” Castiel starts and Crowley shrugs.

“It's what we would do.”

“Then we should get moving.”

But when he tries, Gabriel's expression twists in discomfort and both of them fall still. Gabriel begins to bleed again, from wings that spark across the room, energy jumping along the wiring, frying lights and television. Blood that drips like mercury before it evaporates into nothing.

Castiel stays plastered to Gabriel's side, a pulse of healing energy or just grace stroking along grace. Crowley tries not to watch, tries not to feel the catch of suffocating worry. He leaves a handful of times over the next day to bring together and organize the armies of Hell. He always comes back to the same scene. Gabriel’s wing continues to bleed and every hour, the archangel’s form looks more drawn, more tired despite that he appears unconscious in Castiel’s arms whenever Crowley comes back to the room.

They all sense it when Raphael has a vessel again. He’ll have returned to Earth, he’ll have heard the gossip. He’ll be hunting the three of them down and they can’t keep sitting here.

“I can feel his grace. It searches for mine,” Castiel says, strain in his voice to match the lines growing beneath his eyes. They’ve been sitting here for over a day. The armies in Hell are waiting for a command and Castiel’s angels are standing at the lines.

Crowley’s patience for playing nursemaid to the archangel is wearing thin. “Then lets _move_.”

“We _can’t_ -“

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” Gabriel breaks in and even Crowley jumps as Gabriel had appeared nearly vacant from the room altogether. “You brought me here to kill an archangel, that’s exactly what’s gonna happen.”

“Gabriel…”

“Shut up, Cas.”

The angels spend a minute sizing each other up and Crowley’s about to offer them an hour to themselves when Castiel says, never once looking away from Gabriel, “Crowley, give me your hand.” And he holds out his own. His vessel’s and from that, the blue-grey gnarled and long fingers of his own. “ _Your_ hand,” Castiel says again. He stays focused on Gabriel, who studies them both with narrowed calculating eyes.

It takes Crowley a moment to understand and he lets loose a deep breath. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” Hell, he hopes he knows what he's doing. Hopes he remembers that there's a line here somewhere, between doing this to help himself and doing it because... He can't even put it into thoughts. His Hellhounds aren't going to be able to tell him from an angel, he's going to be so covered in their smell and their feelings and their zealot thoughts. But he reaches his own hand out while Castiel responds, “Whatever it takes.” Which is all any of them can do at this point. And Crowley reminds himself that that’s the only reason any of them are here at this point.

The blue tips of Castiel’s sharp fingers sink into Crowley’s palm, a crackle of grace races up his arm and his soul, the twisted mutilated thing that is his true form and his self, panics. It runs, Crowley runs, streams from the mouth of his meat suit and gets caught in the spider web energy of Castiel’s wings. It burns and it excites. The human he wears falls to the floor and Castiel’s wings hold him together. Castiel’s grace spills into the core of him, from the angel’s fingers and eyes, searching out the once soul that Crowley still has. It might be broken but it still holds all the power of any soul, a thing that angels have never had.

Castiel finds it and siphons the energy in it, sparking and wavering with its own heat, into Gabriel who moans and brings his wings to bear with Castiel’s. Crowley might moan as well, might cry out at the ecstasy of feeling if he had a throat to do so. God, the abomination in this room. The taboo of this act, like sex but not. He can feel Castiel taking from him and using the burn of a wrongful act to solder Gabriel's grace and the demon _revels_ in it.

It might be hours or minutes or seconds before Castiel and Gabriel withdraw from him. The two angels haven’t left their vessels and Crowley streams back into his, alight and sore in sensation.

“Well if that’s what angel sex is like then- Ah.” Crowley glances up from straightening his coat and finds the two angels embraced. Still or again, he’s honestly not sure when their wings still feel like ice cold brands against him. He watches them for a moment, the lock of their mouths and the hard grip of Castiel’s vessel’s fingers on Gabriel’s sides and the dip inwards of his true form. They still blend together, in desperation and apology, Crowley can read the emotions in the shades of their grace but when he blinks the edges of them blur out of focus.

Crowley’s meat suit grows hard. Sins of the flesh but the angels don’t seem too keen in partaking of that aspect beyond the slide of their mouths.

“It wasn't sex,” Gabriel says when the angels part. “It was us taking from you. The sex'd probably just kill you.”

“Well then take from me whenever you want, darling.” So he's a little smug. Sue him.

Castiel is inspecting Gabriel's wings, running his fingers along wavering paths in the air. Crowley suspects that Castiel can see them much clearer than he can, can probably pick out all the details of their structure but Crowley has to go on picturing feathers made of light and static. It's all a little romantic for him and he clears his throat impatiently.

“If you two are done pawing, it's time to move this show on.”

Wards on the room or not, that was a show of power a moment ago and Raphael will have noticed.

Castiel looks to Gabriel for assurance and Gabriel inclines his head once but when he gains his feet, he's still not as steady on them as he was. Gabriel's eyes, focused and hard, dare either of them to say a word.

  
******   


Crowley releases his demons into Heaven and they swarm to fill the jasper city Castiel has made his home base.

There's a narrow ocean channel between this city and the next and they'll call Raphael out there, in the air above the waves.

“A final battle,” Gabriel says. “Brother against brother. Two archangels, two of the four. Raphael can't turn that down, he'll come. Whichever one of us wins, there's gonna be chaos after, you'll need your armies ready.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Gabriel shrugs and stares out over the water and Crowley doesn't _care_ , he doesn't. But he thinks the archangel looks resigned and frightened. “It's written. I think we just fucked up the translation a bit.”

“Gabriel.” Castiel steps up and Gabriel shoots a glare at him.

They're standing on the white sandy edges of the beach. The ocean spreads out before them, calm and dark. The jasper city rises behind them, where angels and demons stand together free of the constraints of their vessels and human suits waiting. It's only the three of them standing on the beach that keep theirs.

“I know what I said. Destiny is all bullshit and it is. Most of it is. But look what it's come down to. I've still got to kill my brother. But I bet Dad never saw the three of us. Heaven, Earth and Hell? We still have a few lessons to teach all of them.”

Crowley is sure Castiel is going to bow at Gabriel's feet and Crowley himself feels a distinctly unpleasant tightening in his chest that he puts down to disgust. Gabriel's inspirational speeches and righteous alliances aside, Crowley just wants to get this over with. To know that Hell is going to be able to continue thriving and that he can get rich on human souls while it does. He doesn't need to think about goodness and justice. He's a _demon_ , dammit.

“Gorgeous, angel. I think you've brought a tear to my eye.” Crowley breaks the moment before it can become one. He counts down the minutes to the time when he can get back to the way things should be and put all this angel nonsense behind him.

“Castiel,” Gabriel addresses his brother formally and Castiel immediately straightens to attention. “Go see to your army and make sure they’re ready. Go,” he continues when Castiel hesitates and Castiel goes. Gabriel waits for him to vanish into the jasper city before he sighs.

Crowley watches him, the ache in his expression. “What is it?” Gabriel didn’t just send Castiel away for nothing.

“I want to make a deal.” Crowley arches an eyebrow in interest. “Keep an eye on him. Help him when he needs it. He’s still young and stupid.”

There’s that uncomfortable feeling. Crowley’s sick of it and he snorts and glares out at the water which is calming in the eye of the upcoming battle. “Come on, angel. Keep an eye on him yourself.” But Gabriel just stares at him and they both know it. They’re both jaded enough to know the ending. “Fine. I’ll even give you this one for free.”

Gabriel smirks. “You have such a good heart.”

“Don’t tell anyone about this.” He holds out a hand to shake on it and though Gabriel eyes his palm, he takes it and squeezes hard. “Can we get on with the killing already? The dogs are pulling at their chains.”

Literally, as behind them up the beach to the entrance of the city are two Hellhounds held on chains by angels. Castiel steps through to rejoin them and Crowley thinks the sight is rather a fantastical one. The hounds are impatient. Crowley is impatient and though there is an occasionally drip of grace from Gabriel's torn wings, Gabriel nods once Castiel says they’re ready and a powerful thrust of energy sees him in the sky, self-formed vessel dispersing into nothing.

Crowley still can't make out the wings perfectly but he can see the displaced air to either side of Gabriel. Castiel stays on the beach by Crowley's side and they watch the archangel hover above the water and beneath the clouds. It's quiet and dark until an arrow of light stabs up into the sky, casting sharp shadows over the jasper city and even reaching the silver city and the garden across the shores. It tunnels up and Crowley has to shield his vision while the Hellhounds whimper, but Castiel stares into it.

“Let me guess. Horn of Gabriel?” Crowley snaps, blinking away the afterimages.

“A call to battle,” Castiel answers stiffly. He's standing ready to jump in, a tense line, a crackle to his eyes which have again fogged over to a milky white. His true form swims in and out of focus around his vessel and Crowley knows he only wears it as a courtesy to himself and the other demons here. Angels without their vessels are difficult at best to focus on.

Raphael gives Gabriel no time at all.

The flash of light has barely faded before he drops on Gabriel from above like a hawk. Crowley settles his hand on Castiel's arm to stop him moving forward when Raphael grabs Gabriel's wing, a flash of light that spider webs and fades from the point of contact but the first clash is brief and they land together almost cordial on the water.

The angels hiss to each other in Enochian that every angel and demon in Heaven can hear and understand.

“Brother. You would stand against Heaven?”

Gabriel gives a careless shrug and his blade slips into his hand. “If you really wanna see it that way. I stand for Earth which is...kind of the twine that holds it all together, wouldn't you say?” A grin is there and gone. “It's not all so black and white.”

Crowley wants to yell out to stop trying to reason with the damn angels. They're stubborn, they don't see reason. Kill him. But they circle each other, ready and wary and reluctant to strike first.

“Traitor. If you're not with us, you're against us.”

“Boy you really have been taking lessons from Michael. We don't have to do this. There are other ways. Me and Cas, we found them.”

“By dealing with demons?” Raphael sneers over to the shore of the jasper city where the dark Hellhounds stand out starkly on the white beach. The angels that stand ready at the silver city across the water are barely seen among the sand.

From where the ocean opens vast and unending, there comes a scream and Castiel takes his gaze from the circling archangels, narrowing his eyes to scan the distance. Another and Crowley catches Castiel whisper “The phoenix,” the same moment Gabriel snaps “By thinking for ourselves,” and finally he breaks the circle and takes the first swing at Raphael.

There's a clash like lightening from the water, sparks and grace, and from further off, an answering thunder and an encroaching red horizon.

“We can't let the phoenix reach Gabriel,” Castiel shouts over the sudden noise of the archangels as they launch to the air, whip crack wing beats and the screeching meet of their blades. Castiel has turned to run up the shore, tearing from Crowley's grip on his arm, shouting as he goes. “Get in the air! Cut off the phoenix!”

And the angels are listening, flashes of color that take off from the jasper city and to the air; they streak across the water to the growing red above the gentle waves. The angels across the shores react to the movement and Crowley calls his own army to meet them. The two angels at the jasper city entrance release the Hellhounds, who run out onto the water and it turns to ice beneath their feet. They catch at the wings of Raphael's angels to drag them down.

Still on the shore, Crowley watches the three battles and Castiel says with hesitation in his voice, “Gabriel needs help.”

He's looking from Crowley to the armies. Demons and angels above the city. A phoenix screaming and feinting at angels in the distance. Crowley rolls his eyes. “Now's not the time, angel. We made a deal. I'm a demon, not stupid.” He hauls Castiel close, a kiss to flare the lines of their bargain and all that it means. Castiel gives a single nod.

“The angels are yours to command.” And he's joining Gabriel, leaving Crowley alone on the shoreline with only an empty vessel at his side.

Crowley watches them for a moment, picks out their talk from the rest of the noise. The two angels' grace has imprinted on him so deeply, he can hear them almost without thought.

“Archangel against archangel! As written!” Raphael screams at them.

“I just want this _over_ ,” Gabriel answers, dark enough that Crowley looks away. But he stills sees it. As Raphael strikes and sinks his blade through Gabriel's hand and Gabriel doesn't flinch. As Castiel forgoes a weapon altogether, using his long sharp fingers to rend through Raphael's back. The archangel screams but still his own army doesn't come to his help, held back by orders and archaic prophesies.

It's still Gabriel who twists Raphael's blade away and plunges it into Raphael's chest.

The flash of light overshadows every angel there. The phoenix's scream brings up crashing waves across the ocean and it darts through the wall of living angels that hold it off.

Crowley sees it and shouts a warning to the angels where they hover in midair around the dying archangel. Castiel looks back, a widening of eyes and he's grabbing Gabriel to dart them upwards. The phoenix arrows on, its talons flash forward, but it's not Gabriel this time. It screams, surrounds Raphael, and then they're both gone. A dozen other angels and as many demons go too and the ocean falls back to a deathly silence.

  
******   


They don't talk much in the aftermath. The appearance of the Phoenix and the sudden death of Raphael stop the battles and Raphael’s angels are easily subdued. Heaven and Hell both stagnate and Earth just doesn't care. They’re all back suddenly to unending amounts of time, where nothing needs to be done in a hurry because they all live forever and time is fluid and yet interchangeable from one reality to the next.

Their current reality is Earth. A neutral zone and a default for the three of them. Back in a Vegas suite where Gabriel spends his time on the bed, Crowley eats all the pistachios in the fridge, and Castiel paces back and forth before the windows. They haven't been able to stop Gabriel's hand leaking grace and the tears in his wings are reopening.

None of them say a word for twenty-four hours.

Crowley's patience breaks first and none of them are surprised at this. He sits up from the chair he'd been reclined back on and lets his feet thump heavily down from their resting place on the edge of the bed. Castiel has been fussily doing something with Gabriel's wings. Grooming them seems too simple a term. Gabriel keeps staring out the window but if an angel can hold a grudge for eons, they can probably sulk for the same amount of time.

“I think it's time to revisit our deal,” Crowley says.

Castiel shakes his head. “The deal is lifted. With Raphael defeated, his angels have no order. Gabriel and I-”

“You.” They both look to Gabriel. Castiel opens and shuts his mouth. Crowley already knows where this is going and sits back. “I've got other places to be. You'll have to carry the rest on your own, bro.”

Castiel looks so hopelessly confused that Crowley has to take pity on him. “Purgatory, angel.”

Gabriel nods. “I skipped a big part of the whole live and die thing.” Castiel opens his mouth again and Crowley’s getting that tight feeling in his chest. The sooner he can cut loose from this whole ordeal the better. These angels are going to turn him soft and he suspects this long forgotten feeling might be sympathy. “You know it’s after me, Cas. And I’ve been hiding a lot, most of my existence actually; it hasn’t really done much for me. Might try this facing life head-on thing that you’ve got going.”

“No. This isn't life. This is death.” Castiel's words are short, the muscle in his jaw ticks as tension settles over him but he only stares without reaction.

“Cas. You gotta let me do this. You probably taught me more than God ever did. More than Lucifer. I can’t take the easy way anymore; I have to see this through.” Castiel only stares at him but what can he do except nod? Gabriel grins. “Don’t start crying. I’m not running out yet.” He shifts his gaze to Crowley who feels distinctly caught out and uncomfortable, schooling his expression back into a careful mask of ‘I just don’t give a damn’. “We need to revisit the deal.”

  
******   


An alliance between Heaven and Hell will hold. No more battles on Earth. The renegade angels are to be rounded up and the demons as well. The vessel bloodlines are to be protected. The crossroads demons are allowed their jobs. Mostly? Things go on the way they always have. Demons will always get loose and angels will always fall. Bad things will happen for no reason but good things do happen as well.

Hell has a king that’s not locked in a cage and that can see the bigger picture for its future more than old words written on a flimsy page. And Heaven has a sheriff that actually gives a damn.

They seal this once more with a kiss, a contract that can’t ever be broken on Crowley’s twisted soul and Castiel’s grace.

Then they take Gabriel to the storm drain in New Jersey.

“Running theory is,” Crowley says as they stand at the mouth, “purgatory may have left but this will always be a gateway.”

“And if you’re wrong?” Gabriel asks with a raised eyebrow.

Crowley shrugs. “Then you’ll probably be crawling around in the mud and water for all eternity.”

“Lovely. Well… Pleasure doing business.” Gabriel holds out his hand and, after a hesitation, Crowley takes it. “Never thought I’d enjoy working with a demon so much. You’re not so bad.”

Crowley lifts his lip in disgust, abruptly tugging his hand away. “Save it.” And he backs off to let the angels have their romantic goodbye. To stare into each other's eyes, Castiel’s heavy with worry and all the clean up and restoration waiting for him in Heaven. Gabriel’s are surprisingly upbeat, his grin reaches his eyes.

“Buck up, kiddo. Take some time to brush up on pagan lore, huh?”

As Castiel’s brow creases in confusion, Gabriel turns and walks into the mist that rises from the mouth of the drain. Crowley stays for as long as Castiel stares into the dark of the tunnel because he has his own deal to uphold.

  
******   


  


  
******

 **Epilogue**

 ******

Castiel counts down a thousand years from the day he was resurrected. As far as he can find, he was the last thing purgatory remade and if legend is correct, it will be a thousand years before all those within become something else.

First, he calls Crowley who has stood by his side for every one of those years and Heaven and Hell have never known such a long period of peace and rest.

Together, they go to a desert in the dead of night, where there is no light but for the stars which blanket the sky. There’s a ritual. Circles of fire, charred feathers, snakes venom. Words from Valhalla that feel strange even on Castiel’s tongue which speaks all languages. In the distance a course starts up from the coyotes. Yips that echo across the land and come slowly closer.

The firelight catches the eyes of one and Castiel stands as it circles them, always just outside the fall of light, always startling away when the sparks crackle against the burning wood.

“Stop playing,” Castiel says.

The coyote stops, ears pricked forward and head cocked to the side. Mouth wide in a grin, it moves in and out of the shadows as a breeze blows along the flames, and in the dark the shape transforms and a man steps forward.

Castiel smiles. “Hello, Gabriel.” And the Trickster laughs.

  
******   



End file.
